


Small Things Seen

by NevillesGran



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Drabble Collection, Eye Trauma, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, increasing in length as I go apparently, specific warnings on individual chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2020-09-28 22:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 4,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20433650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: A collection of very short slivers of fanfic - character study, metaphor, what-if, etc - usually produced vividly by my brain at 2am or so.





	1. Elias + Jon (Toast)

Raise a glass to the high priest and the man he is making into his god, and pour one out for the fact that it’s working


	2. Elias + Jon (Avatar-Raising)

Jon was a grown man when he came to the Institute, albeit one careless in his self-regard, and he burned with curiosity but he had no idea of the truth of the world, and had to be carefully led and pushed in turn into divinity.

On balance, Elias thought he was starting to understand what the Cult of the Lightless Flame had felt for their Agnes.


	3. Melanie (Dancing)

Melanie was dancing. She always had been; she understood that, now. Whether she had been chosen or sent out the call herself, the rage was hers and the rage was a song, and she danced. 

Once it had been sharp and fast and close as the pain in her leg. When she took her knife to the Flesh, her partner had moved in time close enough to touch, clear enough to sing along to his pipes and drum. Now the music was slow, her partner distant, and she kept it that was through teeth so gritted they sometimes belied the purpose.

But still she danced, and her heart matched the beat.


	4. Georgie vs Elias

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ascribing to the Elias = Jonah Magnus theory. Full avatar!Georgie? Or could she do this now? Same thing? Who knows!

For over two centuries, with many names and many forms, Jonah Magnus had run toward Knowledge. Toward the baring of all secrets, the pure essence of Understanding itself, the Ceaseless Watcher of All. The only truth he preferred to avoid was that he ran _from_ something as well.

But now it stalked toward him, a fearless void in the form of a young woman, whom he never should have permitted back into his Archivist’s life. Her mind dwelt in emptiness, an eternity of nothing, the final fate of all things—of the Earth, the universe, the very river of time that buoyed the rest inevitably forward. Neither more nor least of all, of himself.

“Do you want to know a secret_ I_ know?” she asked, and fatal flaw of all servants of Beholding: he could not look away.

She whispered it in his ear.


	5. Peter/Elias (Lonely + Beholding)

Some of Peter's family are skeptical about his relationship with the Head of the Magnus Institute—by definition, Lukases don't _do_ "relationships." It's dangerous, particularly with something as personally invasive as the Ceaseless Watcher. But Peter has never found it difficult to feel alone even while being seen, and the Watcher only makes it easier. If there is one thing he's sure of, it's that if he was ever in trouble—if the _Tundra_ was lost, if the Hunt was on his heels, if his own family had disowned him—and he went to the Institute for asylum, Elias Bouchard would lock the door and watch with cool disinterest as Peter died cold and alone in the street.

That certainty is what makes the rest safe, or safe enough to be wholly worth the risk. When he visits the Institute and the low burn of an unseen glower keeps him stealing away only a statement-giver (recently isolated by their terrible experience) rather than a more thoroughly forsaken employee (Elias doesn't tend to hire people with family or friends to mourn them.) 

When they tumble into a bed and Elias whispers all the filthy things he knows Peter wants him to do, and follows through until it's too close, too intimate; Peter fears in equal measure that he'll never be able to return to the achingly empty fog and that Elias will stop touching him, will abandon him to the Forsaken unfulfilled. And by now he knows just how to make Elias moan in turn, whether Elias likes it or not, so they feed two gods at once.

When he thinks of something earnest and truly uncomfortable to say, words that should never pass the lips of a scion of Mooreland Hall, and before he can decide whether to fumble it into words or push it away and forget it ever happened, disappear for a week or fifty—Elias gives him a wry, amused, _knowing_ smile, and a kiss on the cheek as though to say it back.

Peter still disappears, of course. But only for half a year or so.


	6. Peter + Breekon (Alone - ep128)

Peter knew it as soon as the Stranger thing entered the Institute, his domain on loan. Though “Stranger” might not be the right epithet anymore—it was still unidentifiable on some fundamental level, humanoid but not quite human, but in the loss of its other half, it had become more its own being. A recognizable  Self. And it had become alone, so utterly, _exquisitely_ alone.

It was alone like a child lost in the dark forest. It was alone like a twin left dead in the womb. It was alone like it had never feared anything else but not known it until the terror became true, and Peter stalked it through the halls like a Hunter because he couldn’t look away.

Elias would have been proud of how patiently he waited and watched as it confronted the Archivist—but then, Peter has never been one for confrontation, and the bouquet of loneliness only grew. It didn’t even know if it had delivered the coffin on lonely reflex, or vengeance for its terrible loss, or some perverse sense of sympathy (the only sour note of attachment) for Basira Hussain’s own missing half. 

When the Archivist tore it apart with his Gaze, baring it’s soul-searing isolation, it fled so desperately that it didn’t even notice that the end of the corridor disappeared into fog. It didn’t notice for a long time.

When it did, it’s despair was all the sweeter.

Maybe Peter would even let it out, when he was done with the initial feast. A nondescript man with a van could always be useful. 


	7. Basira + Dark Things (Bad Ending)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired, of course, by ep154.

On her good days, Basira didn’t regret a single thing about burning her own eyes out to escape Beholding.

This was one of the very, very, very bad days.

“It’s one of them that killed our Raynor, isn’t it?” The voice coiled around her; she could almost feel the scales.

“It is! It is!” The chorus whispered from the farther darkness.

“But she forsook her glaring god, and delivered herself right to us!”

“She did! She did!”

“This isn’t real,” Basira said, as steadily as she could. “It’s just like the Unknowing, except I do know, now. You’re all just a nightmare.”

Except she didn’t know, she couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t see. She had a flashlight, she waved it back and forth, it shone a light—except she didn’t know that, either. If this was real, it probably didn’t. She _didn’t know_. She _couldn’t see_.

The whispers pressed closer with claws, scales, trails of dark water.

“Shouldn’t have lost your eyes!” they laughed, hissing from every direction. “Shouldn’t have left them behind,  _Detective_, if you were so scared of the dark!”


	8. Jon + Elias (Elias=Jonah)

Jon storms into the cell, _done_ with silence. “Elias-”

The demand for answers catches on the tip of his tongue as he Knows. Awed and wondering, breathless and almost purring with the promise of secrets about to be revealed, he says, “No..._Jonah_.”


	9. Jon (+Martin, Peter; Frozen)

Martin turned away, walked away, into the storm. Jon reached after him but the wind blew around him, sleet and snow whipped his skin; the shout died in his frozen throat and the last tips of his fingers turned to ice. Martin disappeared.

"Oh, Archivist," said Peter Lukas, genial and sympathetic. "If only there was someone out there who loved you."

Jon woke with a start for the first time in months. He never woke up from other people's nightmares, just watched. Always watched.

He separated himself carefully from Daisy's legs, stretched as they were across him on the break room's beat-up sofa. Her head rested in Basira's lap. Both women were still asleep, as was the laptop on the table.

So, movie night: overall a success, but Disney marathon: bad idea, as predicted, and not just because of the mindless repetition of the plots.

Though any nightmare he could wake up from, he supposed, had to be counted as a victory.

If only it felt like he'd woken up.


	10. Hunter & Archivist (ep153)

_"Honestly, I panicked. Her name came up first on my phone."_

It's not a lie. "'Daisy' Alice Tonner" is before "Basira Hussain." Yet also...

The Archivist didn't see them coming, because what good is a Hunter whose prey sees them before they're ready to be seen. But also, what good is a Hunter who doesn't know when _her_ territory is being intruded upon (her hand twitched, her blood rose, she scented the air for fear without thinking.)

And, prey though he was, what good is an Archivist who doesn't Know when his assistant (who calls him _pack_) is sensing new danger. Is seeking hidden knowledge.

Once he knew there was knowledge to be found, there was no hiding it, not here in his own domain. Hunters stalk in shadows, but there are none beneath the unceasing glare of the Eye above.

Yes, he panicked, and yes, her number came up first, and yes, these things are tangentially related. But she was already on her feet when the phone rang. 


	11. A Shift in Perspective (Melanie + Elias/Jonah, s3 bad ending)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fairly graphic violence/eye horror in this one! Also, possession!

Martin's plan isn't all bad. The distraction sure works—Elias rushes out of his office right on cue, and doesn't notice Melanie at all until she's tackled him to the floor. Until his head cracks against the hard wood and her knife is stabbing down, digging out his eye with not a lot of delicacy. But yes a lot of blood.

See, here's what Melanie figures: maybe the others are right, and they can't kill him without killing themselves. But this life they now live is a nightmare, and nightmares don't stop because someone gets arrested. Not Melanie's. Melanie's nightmares are full of blood and terror, the pounding of her heart, the firing of ringing guns—and the ever-watching presence of eyes.

That's what they serve, after all, in this hell of a workplace. "The Eye", or "Beholding" or "Voyeuristic Armageddon II: Now With More Creepers." Whatever you want to call it. So, if she can't kill Elias, maybe she can just pry out his eyes (which will probably kill him anyway), and they'll all be free of _that_ bullshit.

It works. Or, she carves his eyes out of his head as he screams, with enough blood to satisfy the singing in her veins. She looks down at them with glee. A little ragged—she wasn't exactly careful—but squishy. She's going to stomp on them. It's going to be fun.

They look back.

Now the nightmare starts properly. Kneeling in the hallway over Elias's bloody body, she holds his eyes in one hand and watches as her other reverses its grip on the knife. She watches as it draws near, as though she's the one holding it, and the body under her twitches but she doesn't. Not even when the knife comes too close to see its point. Not even as it pierces her eye and it's not careful at all; it twists and cuts and she can barely cry out.

She watches with her one eye left as she reaches up and pushes one of the eyes in her hand into the remains of her socket. And she falls apart. What's left watches as the knife comes again.

She pulls together again.

Oh, _she_, this time. That’s going to take some getting used to. And less useful, in the perceptions of many small-minded people (that is, most of them.) Well, last chance pays for all—and this _should_ be the last.

(Though, so should Elias have been—damn, first Gertrude and now this. He’s getting sloppy, now when he absolutely cannot afford to do so.)

The memories of Melanie King settle into place (a servant of Beholding is not in the habit of _losing_ information) and Jonah stands, wiping his bloody hands on his pants. Her pants. Whatever. The tricky part will be explaining it to Jon—and he _will_ need to explain it to Jon, he can’t simply go on pretending to be Melanie, because if the Archivist isn’t strong enough to see through that, then he’s not strong enough to survive the Unknowing. That alternative isn’t to be considered, no matter how distracting this little interlude has been.

Oh, and Martin is still burning the statements. Of course. Can no one in this institute simply do as they’re _told_.


	12. Jon vs. Peter (fantasy metaphor/imagery)

Behold, there on the shore: a knight fights a monster, to save his beloved whom it's stolen away. The dragon is great and terrible, here in the heart of its power; it has drowned hundreds in its time and it came to land to sate more of its ceaseless appetite. But the knight will not be cowed. His wings are an angel’s and his sword is Truth; he pierces the monster again and again as it snarls and flings him against the surf.

Behold, there on the shore: a sea dragon fights a monster, to return to the sea that he loves. The knight has invaded his home with terrible force: a sword that burns, a voice that thunders, wings all covered in eyes. Lured to land and trapped in this battle, the dragon fights for his life, flings him away with a desperate roar...only for the terrible burning blade to slice open his heart.

The maiden fair is too far drowned to know how close he is to salvation. The king watches from his tower, content with pride.


	13. Melanie + Georgie + Sympathy Card, post-160

On the second day of the apocalypse, the first full day after the world ended, Melanie and Georgie slept in, because they’d both been up all night on the radio.

Nothing interrupted them until the doorbell.

After some argument, they went to get it together, Georgie with her fearlessness and Melanie with her cricket bat.

“It’s a...card?” said Georgie, and bent down to pick something up. Melanie stepped back to give her room to close the door, and there was the ripping of an envelope. “A sympathy card—the sort with an audio message—”

The sound of card stock moving as she opened it, and then an exquisitely familiar voice, meticulous in its dryness:

“I thought I’d offer my apologies, Melanie—I know it’s embittering, to have escaped Beholding at such personal cost, only to have it and all thirteen other Entities brought into the world barely a month later. Just bad timing, really. At least you got the vacation, hmm? Anyway, I wish you and Ms. Barker all the best in the _terrible_ new world.”

Melanie didn’t hear the vicious satisfaction with which Elias finished his message. She didn’t hear most of his words—she heard the siren song of ripping, tearing, cracking violence; the vision she didn’t have had gone red and she was halfway down the hall before she realized that the weight on her arm was Georgie, the begging, “Melanie, stop!” wasn’t a broken plea for mercy but her girlfriend pulling her back from—

—murder that would be _so justified_, but—

“He’s not worth it, Melanie.” Georgie pushed down the bat, tugged her back toward the flat. _Their_ flat, where she lived with her amazing girlfriend, who was kind and sensible and utterly fearless. “Come on, he’s not worth it.”

Melanie breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth, as she’d practiced in therapy. “Right. I’m-” 

The rage still beckoned. So did the screams—outside, down the hall, in the back of her own mind. The music still played.

“I’m fine,” she said, and let Georgie tug her back inside. “I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: I wonder if I can make Elias _even more_ despicable?


	14. Evan Lukas

It wasn't as though Evan didn't know what was about to happen, when his father and sister both showed up at his flat. Together. He enjoyed a spike of vindictive satisfaction that they expected him to put up enough fight to require teamwork, normally anathema to a Lukas.

At least Naomi was out. Of course, that just meant she would come back to an empty flat. She wouldn't know what had happened. After a few hours without any word, she would get worried. She would think he was hurt somewhere, or worse, that he'd left her—probably the latter. All they would need to do would be take some of his things, a change of clothes and a toothbrush and such, and it would seem like no one in the world wanted her after all. 

The room had already started going chill at the thought of it, without anybody saying a word.

But time moved differently in the Lonely. Maybe if he went very deep, very fast, he would die without lingering, and she would at least know that he hadn't left her willingly.


	15. A Dream About Gods (Jon+Georgie, Apocalypse)

I dreamt about the gods again last night.

Who doesn’t, when they walk the Earth—or crawl or burn or fall or hunt or a hundred other ways to shine in fear? I dream about the gods when I, too, walk the terror-wracked earth, and when I can’t keep my eyes open any longer, I dream about them in my shivering sleep.

But it’s two in particular that worry me, that haunt me night after night.

One used to be a man, and he knows nothing but fear. He knows _every_ fear. He sees it, hears it, feels it, breathes it. Horror pumps through his veins; dread holds up his bones. In the new world of gods, he is the center; all the rest woven through him. The Eye of the storm.

He is walking south.

One is still a woman, I think. She knows fear. She sees it, she hears it, it surrounds her at every moment—but it cannot touch her. The flame and the flood, the dread and the horror, the gods and the monsters...they shrink from her. Where she steps, for a moment, the world is empty and fearless. 

She is walking north.

I don’t know what will happen when they meet. I know they will, because more threads yet bind them together, so terribly tight—and only terrible things happen now, when gods walk the Earth. I wake up shaking each night, no matter which god I dream of. I don’t remember anymore what I am without the fear.

When they meet, something terrible will happen. But I’m not sure who I want to win.


	16. Gertrude+Beholding

Gertrude Robinson was entirely consumed by Beholding, no matter how pleasantly she continued to disappoint “Elias” with regards to its extent.

She didn’t have the capacity for self-delusion, concealment of truth from even herself. She never really had, she thought. So when she realized that none of the rituals she’d stopped would have worked anyway - that all the lives she’d sacrificed had been pointless betrayals, innocent Michael Shelley and Yan Killbride who was still, likely, suffering, and the rest...she considered dismissing it, but she was the Archivist. She Knew the truth when she found it.

She should have made a backup plan, and she did. But it was lackluster, depended on too many unknown variables (police reaction times, traffic, her own freedom of movement, when she would be busy with other dangerous tasks...)

But she both Knew that she was right and  needed the certainty of proof, a burning curiosity so tangible that it reminded her of Agnes. And the only way to get proof, absolute and true, was to sit back and watch the world (fail to) end.

Watch the Ritual of Black Sun, at least. Beholding itself, she intended to return the sense of burning to, with incendiary interest.


	17. Evan Lukas/Naomi Herne

This is a world of fear. There are no gods of love or happiness or even indigestion.

_(You are alone, and really, you always have been. You had the choice to embrace it or to lose to it, and you are so, so lost. You almost found a way out, once, but then you were dragged back and flung deeper, because that's what family does. There were buildings, once, an empty city, or maybe just empty roads, but now there is nothing. Now there is just you, or what remains of you, and you are alone.)_

This is a ruined world.

_(You are alone. You don't know if you're dreaming or awake, and it doesn't seem to matter anymore. You still run, sometimes, when a fourth cousin thrice removed of rage takes you (not hope; that's long gone). More often you sit by the graves that never had anyone to hold, or lie by the divots that were never dug graves in the first place. Even the terrible figure that followed you without moving is gone, faded to a sense of distant watching. It is too far away to care, too careless to help. You are alone.)_

Two wrongs do not make a right—

_(You are alone no matter what and you always were; there is a shock of being _seen_ but it isn't by a person, it doesn't make you less alone, no matter how desperately you reach out—)_

_(You are alone and you always will be; you run and you stumble and it only hurts to (but still you) reach out—) _

But maybe, by accident of a careless world, two left-behinds can.

_(Your fingers touch.)_


	18. Werewolf!Daisy & Pack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [agentandromeda's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/agentandromeda) incredible urban fantasy au, ["Daylight Is Waiting For You"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21562675/chapters/51406453).

On full moons, it wasn’t possible to hold back the wolf. As soon as the moon peeked over the horizon, whether or not she could even _see_ it in the middle of the city, Daisy changed. Fur, teeth, claws…instincts. But it’d been years, now, and she’d learned. She couldn’t hold back the wolf, but she could choose what it focused on.

So the moon rose and the wolf took hold, and instead of chasing muggers in the park and waking up with blood on her teeth, Daisy stalked the Archive, and counted off her pack.

There was Jon and Martin, curled up together on the break room couch with a book each and a shared blanket. The Archivist’s unwashed laundry/magical static/ritual chalks scent clung to the vampire and the vampire’s whiff of not-quite-dried blood stuck to the Archivist; musty-books and quiet contentment came from both of them.

There were Sasha, Tim, and Melanie clustered around the spare computer console that Sasha had rigged up with a switch. They all raced with adrenaline, as Sasha shouted triumphantly and trounced the other two in Mario Kart. Tim groaned and Melanie collapsed in giggles. Where was—

Daisy bounded up the stairs to meet Georgie coming down from the kitchen, then leapt back out of the way of the tray of kahlua hot chocolates she carried and slipped in behind to herd her back to the others. The witch had finally stopped rolling her eyes at that; she just gave Daisy a pat on the head, once she’d set the tray on a spare desk, and kissed Melanie on the forehead as she passed her a mug.

The smoke scent of Tim’s magic flared as he took his own mug and heated it beyond human common sense. A whiff of Unseelie too-cold, not-quite spearmint also clung to him—he’d been with his brother earlier. That was fine. Daisy had an agreement with Danny Stoker. Even a changeling was too fey not to go dancing on full moons, but he was welcome back in the morning.

She left them to it—chocolate would only make the wolf queasy, and there was still most important stop of her patrol to check.

Basira has long-since made a reading nest for herself in a corner of the Archive shelves, and even brought in a hanging lamp to hook to one shelf. Some blankets formed a permanent base; others draped over in a cloak and second, particularly fluffy hijab; and still more were spread out to provide enough room for a full-sized direwolf to sprawl across.

“Hey.” She looked up from her book and offered a hand as one habitual motion, and Daisy rubbed her head against it with just as little thought. Basira didn’t flinch away from the size of her teeth, the bone-crunching muscles in her jaw. Experienced with lupine body language, she scratched under Daisy’s chin as requested.

“You done with your rounds for the night? I’ll tell you about the history of Kensington architecture.” She waved the book enticingly.

Daisy flicked her ears in the negative. The moon was full, and she twitched to be on the move, if not chasing then pacing. Keeping watch.

“Alright.” Basira settled back, and patted the wolf-sized blanket bed beside her. “I’ll be here if you get tired.”

Daisy lunged in to lick her face, a taste for the road, then dashed away grinning before Basira could do more than yelp. The moon was full and the wolf couldn’t be held back—but with a couple more perimeters to be _entirely certain _that her whole pack was here and safe, she could be content.


End file.
